I’ve not mentioned it for a while, but decided to play “Battle of the Beats” on a local radio station and I’ve taken part in it about 10 times. Usually, it ends up with my arse getting whipped. I started playing it for the first time this year, just for a bit of fun. The radio station is known as “V2 Radio”, you can listen on DAB if you have one of those radios and on the south coast or online. https://www.v2radio.co.uk). Super friendly radio station and a lot of what is advertised is mainly around West Sussex and Hampshire in the UK, so bear it in mind. With Steve, he plays anything and everything, so you can listen in and put a request in.
Battle of the Beats is a part of the show where 2 listeners of the show go head to head, like during the day, they do Battle of the Businesses where the steaks are higher, in that you win free pizza for your team with knowledge. No prizes for Battle of the beats, but bragging rights. The idea is you present 4 songs, the person challenging has to give you either:
A year
A decade
An Open selection
Out of that, you pick 4 songs plus a backup in case of duplication and the audience votes who they like. Some couples get involved with the voting and some households get split. Obviously, some do better than other with their choices and some manage to stay on for weeks and weeks. The voting is easy, Whatsapp, email or calls, Steve or the DJ counts up the votes, the winner stays on for another week, unless its a draw, then the roles are reversed. Its basically a bit of fun. Some can take it more competitive than others, like my second week when I usually end up defeating to a listener, this time, it was the other way round.
You tend to get some surprises from some of the choices (see below), but I have tried in the past putting Dizzie Rascal and Kid Cudi together, I was told that was way too risky.
I started by challenging someone to the year 2008 for music, and I thought “Lets try something”, I thought it would be close, but not what I expected! My plan was to go for club beats, what you would find in a club, this is what I had
If you listen again (Follow this link: Steve Freegard – V2 Radio), it was aired on the 16/08/2025 from the 2 hr mark. Winner decided from the 3hr 15 minute mark.
If you listen to this link and listen from about the 2 hour mark, you’ll hear my selection. The votes? Well, landslide, you’ll have to listen, either way, I was on for another week. One of my friends (known as Steve the Taxi Driver) wanted to play against me and he was like “you better win!”
Oh I did!
So week 2, the year 1993. If you listen again, it was aired on the 23/08/2025 (2hr mark), winner from the 3 hr 15 minute makr.
Usually, I’d get my arse kicked, not this time! I predicted it would be a draw, Steve FG predicted a loss, Steve TD predicted he would lose. I think Steve TD was right, but my guess of a draw was in fact very close. I’ll give you a hint, it was 1 vote (later declared 2 votes) between us – out of 21 votes! He wasn’t happy, I was shocked. Really. Also, I wanted to replace Corona with Urban Cookie Collective – Key, the secret (Which probably would of got me more votes), but I think the artist repetition would have been a problem. I was told I couldn’t use it though.
Now comes week 3, which I am challenged to the year 2000, I think this could be one of those difficult ones to judge.
Me
Opponent
Rui Da Silva – Touch me (Gulty pleasure of mine) and was released 01/01/01, but was played from Oct 2000)
Of course, we have to have back ups, For me, I’ve chosen Alice DJ – Better off alone, which I am considering of swapping out DJ alligator project with either of those 2. I don’t know, someone comment? DJAP doesn’t get much air time, while Kylie does. I’m also trying to go for that EuroDance theme and as it has to be from 2000 or thereabouts, some of the ones I wanted to include like DeeDee is a little too late and adding an instrumental (Yomanda – Synth and Strings) was a little too early.
EDIT later: I changed Kylie Minogue for Ian Van Dahl. Tell me why, Do we build castles in the sky?
I think the voting might be close, Darude – Sandstorm is a very popular choice, I’ve had a landslide where ATB and Darude were both together and proved to be an incredibly popular choice.
Still, I don’t know the voting will go, but if I end up on another week, I’ll be shocked. If I stay on, the one thing I am hoping is an open choice, in that case, I know what I am going for already. Anyone want to challenge me on that? Or you could pick a decade, which I have an idea for 90s. All instrumentals.
If you want to listen to it, it takes place 21:00 BST (British Summer Time – we are still on that), on Friday evening – next show is 29/08/2025 on V2 Radio. (Links open a new window).
Edit 29/08/2025:
Ousted out by one vote! It was nerve racking, I knew it was going to be close. So 3 weeks, I think that was a good run.
This is quite a long post, but I thought I’ll give it my thoughts in the hope it will help someone. (image quality is pretty poor, I had the blind down because the day was a bit hot and my office faces south!)
I’ll start by saying that I hope this review is useful to someone as they are sold on AliExpress where I find some of my interesting equipment, I’ll also tell you what I think. My reasons for purchasing is related to a new position I took up in my own council as previously mentioned, to separate my data and if I am honest, I didn’t want to spend out too much for a device, so seeing a Pritom L8 for less than £50 looks very tempting, what’s it a good buy though?
First impressions:
When my local Evri courier finally dropped off the package, I was instantly greeted with a white bag with a bubble like surround to protect its journey across the seven seas. Well, it flew it, but you get the idea. First problem, green credentials = 0! Its all plastic wrapping to protect it from its bumpy journey.
Getting into it? Well, that was a different matter, the outer wrapper came off easily, the inner one?
Judge for yourself. Things aren’t looking hopeful already. I then was greeted with a nice glossy box. Ok, not as bad as I thought, took the shrink wrap off (green credentials = -1) and then lifted the box.
Well, isn’t this a bit unusual! Shipping the tablet in a case. I’ve heard of tablets and phones shipped with the case, but in the case? That’s another matter. The box was paper, which is good (green credentials = 0) and lifting the tablet out reveals more paper (green credentials = +1).
As for the manuals? Very thin on the ground.
On picking the device up, the one thing you will notice right away is how flimsy the case is, for the price point, its understandable, so a few millimetres here and there of material removed is forgivable. I guess most will end up in the hands of children (I’ll get on to this later) and it will be smashy smashy like Adam Smasher. So the price point is very appealing to parents who don’t want to buy and iPad which – spoiler alert, would be better. However, they would also be much more delicate in terms of use and wallet. So a 3 year old losing its rag and chucking it across the room in a fit of rage, its better to lose a £50 note than something costing 3 times as much. Not that I think it will stand up to that punishment – its not rugged.
On turning it on, it has a factory applied screen protector, peal and what I thought was one part, was 2 part! Nice, if only it was a little thicker. It feels thinner than a sheet of foil.
Build
All plastic! Seriously, plastic fantastic, nothing to write home but it has some weird shaping on the back. The case included is thin as a cheap rubber band, with about as much protection. Knocks, bumps, it will take, but a full on 5 year old tantrum? Probably not and I won’t have much hope for that. I don’t have kids, so I can’t tell. So far, its put up with my daily abuse of going to and from work and a little office work. The screen cover? About as rigid as a microfibre cleaning cloth! To actually stand it up, you had to use it one way, that’s it. Theres also some really weird decisions too. The case doesn’t allow access to the SD card slot, there is 2 speakers (apparently), a microphone on the side which I haven’ tested and 2 cameras. One front and one back – but wait, is there three?
You may of noticed there is a bump showing 2 lenses, ones fake, end of! I proved it because I covered both lenses with my finger and found the bottom one fake. It also doesn’t seem to have a flash either. It looks better than it is, but this is how manufacturers get you to buy their products. At least it has a full size headphone jack at the top of the device.
It also feels really weird at the back. The back feels smooth with the case but it doesn’t feel uniform with the back cover if you take the case off. Maybe the moulds are to cater for multiple tablets? The back looks like it should be a cover, but in fact one moulded unit.
The front? The screen you can clearly see where it is in the frame, its not pure black, but a gray which makes me suggest it uses the older TFT standard, which may explain the price of the tablet. The screen protector is a nice addition though, even it it cost 10p.
Turning it on
This is where I was shocked. It lies, it really does, but they are white lies. Its not Android 14, its 13. So that’s lie one, its one camera, not 2 on the back, but what else is there? Actually, it really isn’t bad. First impressions leave a LOT to be desired.
It started for me and it was slow as hell! No seriously, it was. It turned off, when I turned it on, I couldn’t press the next button on the Out Of the Box Experience screen (OOBE). It didn’t respond. Once I gave it a couple of seconds, I could and reacted normally. It was initially very slow through the OOBE screen, but got quicker and quicker.
Once I logged in, it still was slow, it was 5 minutes in by this point but slowly getting faster, for about half an hour. I was then greeted with possibly the most plain skin of Android. Android as it was intended! Oh, it also got hot, but I initially used a USB to ethernet adapter.
Oh yes, that was a nice surprise. I thought the USB port was for charging only, at this price point, the USB-OTG spec I was expecting to be completely missing, the first adapter didn’t work, but my second one did! So it supports USB-OTG. Good start.
It came with all the Google apps needed and it was geared towards children, you’ll get loads of questions about that at the OOBE experience, so the target audience is children. That’s good. Installing everything, I went for Outlook, Displaylink and a few other apps, geared towards work. They installed without an issue. Poked around in the settings, oh, its Android 13! But the listing was Android 14. It seems to be Android 13 which is Ok I guess. You have the option of extending the ram, this is actually virtual memory and is likely to wear out your storage quicker, so watch out for that problem. And you get the idea.
User experience No skin = nice, its actually pretty quick. I’ll be honest. I was expecting a slideshow! I was not expecting anything impressive but so far, it is pretty good. The screen actually was quite nice, it can be a problem in bright sunlight, but really, its not bad. Its got some surprisingly good viewing angles and it doesn’t have many noticeable problems from when I used it, except…
(No more shown as I am using Microsoft Launcher and to respect GDPR)
The navigation bar! Oh the navigation bar that has been there since the early Android days sucks! Why? Back works, menu works, multi tasking (square) doesn’t at all. So if you accidently close an app, you have to relaunch it. That is the only bad thing about this tablet.
Otherwise, the speakers are pretty OK, I bass isn’t great to be expected, but its clear to my ears (acceptable) and not a garbled mess. Videos play smoothly too and it didn’t get hot after the first initial use. Battery life? Forget it! Seriously. 4 hours if you are lucky.
On screen keyboard? Expect typos, its split by default, so that’s something to watch out for. But for the price? Its not bad.
(Pritom L8 top, Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7 bottom)
Performance I’ve not tested, but as I didn’t want to mess up my council work with my personal work, I just went on WebGL samples and started the aquarium. Compared it to my Samsung and it actually held its own. Its nowhere quick but it did keep up, it really wasn’t horrible and the photo shows that.
Bluetooth works well, I had a keyboard connected and I had no issues, Wifi works on my network without issue and it can charge from anything, not quickly, its rather slow! It works, that’s the thing that really surprised me, there is soo many horror stories of tablets that really suck, this was one of them, so I thought. It really wasn’t’
Camera Samples
As for the camera, just one big piece of advice. Don’t expect much:
Moving objects? Camera lag? Yep, it has it all
Bright sunlight? Forget it!
So who’s it for? Anyone who doesn’t mind a cheap tablet for day to day work that don’t want to spend out for anything expensive. If you are hard on your equipment and tend to break things quickly or go into an area with high amounts of crime, this might be a good buy and no thief is going to want to touch it. Especially when you just do basic work on a tablet. Web browsing, content consumption, bit of word processing, maybe a spreadsheet, it will do it. No issues. Anything performance related? Give it a wide berth. I’ve not tried emulation yet, but it might actually deal with DOS emulation or retro gaming.
Just make sure you carry the charging cable. You will need it and a power bank. It also doesn’t have 3/4G, but has an SD card slot.
Would I buy another, surprisingly, actually, yes, it really isn’t bad for the price.
Reported specifications: Allwinner A523 Octo-core CPU (ARM 8xA55 cores at different speeds, 4×1.8ghz + 4×1.4ghz) Mali G57 GPU RISC-V embeeded controller (WHAT?) 4GB LDDR4 ram 64GB eMMC 8” capacitive touch screen
But the question remains, why is it so cheap? I spent many times thinking about this problem and then it raises more questions than answers. For a start, I’m not suggesting anything at all. In fact, it might be one point that is true and pushing their goods out. So lets start with a list:
– Cheap labour. Assembling these tablets in a factory with low labour rates maybe one thing, its not unknown, but a lot of companies do this, its why China has become so popular. However, the question is, how cheap is too cheap? And at what expense? What is their contracts saying? Are there any concerns about welfare in the factories to reach that price point?
For a fascinating look into how the factories operate, I recommend these videos, its worth a look and draw your conclusions. These were shot 10+ years ago, but even then, the welfare didn’t seem much of a concern: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfyAjkPIYyc
Thin profit margins. Again, not unusual, but its not unknown for companies to build devices through a contractor en-mass where they build one long production run. But doesn’t seem to be the case with this tablet as it was built in June 2025. So may have a late production run. Considering I wrote this in August 2025, that’s about a month hanging on a shelf if not slightly longer
Drop shipping.
Drop shippers are notorious for having, no stock and having to sell products fast, because having products sitting in a warehouse for months on end is extremely costly. In fact, places like AliExpress and Amazon do charge for space after a certain interval. So if you can’t sell a product, you pay for the space it takes. Often again, you look at extremely thin profit margins because of the competition. In some cases, you’ll do anything to get rid of these products, even if it means making a loss because it’s not sold. Even then, in some cases, it’s a case of actually not sending out a small order, but a big one which is less costly than the storage space. That has happened to a colleague of mine
Cheap components. Now I’ve not mentioned the specs. It’s an 8” tablet, tablets of this screensize are not that common, they used to be, but not any more. I find them difficult to hide and 8” tablets fit into places where a larger one doesn’t, such as my trouser pockets. (Yes really). Now smaller screensizes should lower costs. The use of plastics rather than metal is the same and makes the device more rugged (yes really), then we come to the boards, these maybe repurposed boards, but I noticed the A523 chip fitted to this tablet, which was a surprise. Now CPUs or in this case SOC (System On Chip) changes a lot in the budget range when manufacturers try to break into the market and get known. This is actually an old hand called “Allwinner”, who back when Android was appearing was known to produce ultra cheap chips, the Allwinner A523 is no exception. What is surprising is that Allwinner didn’t really deal with much budget range SOCs for about 10 years, so its nice to see them back in the market. Many manufacturers were usually looking at Mediatek who really broke some ground and Spreadtrum who apparently are now UNISOC. Again, Spreadtrum is a name that appeared then disappeared. Allwinner isn’t exactly known for its friendliness to the OpenSource community however and there are controversies. On the other hand, VIA used to offer budget CPU’s but seemed to of faded into obscurity.
Questionable business practices
This is just one of those things you wonder “is it actually happening” kind of thing? The answer is, you don’t know, what happens on the factory floor. Often, the manufacturer of the device is ethical, but not necessarily the component manufacturer. Its not just workers rights that needs to be considered, what is going on in the background? Why are they cheap? Is it because there are other bad links?
Questionable Hardware hacks.
This is one I want to see for myself, I think I can possibly do it and find out, then again, all manufacturers are at it, some more than others. Does Pritom have a link to the Chinese Government? And that may mean, is it riddled with spyware? The answer is, until you do some sort of network diagnostics to inspect every packet, you really can’t tell. Its like the Huawei vs Trump scandal all over again. You can’t base a ban because you feel like it or you got dodgy proof, can you prove it? I can’t, I can only suspect it and until I get more information, I cannot confirm or deny. These days, the only real way to get away with something is to bury it so deep into the firmware, no one can detect it at the surface or takes specialist equipment to find it.
Safety concerns
Apart from the above, which I’ve covered separately, this is unlikely due to the way they work but there is one thing I am particularly concerned about. The mainboard, screen, cameras, shouldn’t pose much of a safety risk in normal use, but I don’t know if it is RoHS certified (Reduction of Hazardous Substances). Which, what is the case carrying? It maybe plastic, but is it painted? With VOCs? (Volatile Organic Compounds). The big one is the biggest concern is the battery to me. Will it turn into a spicy pillow or worse? Sounds far fetched but with lithium ion batteries blowing up everywhere in e-bikes and e-scooters, you have to wonder. After all, why did the Samsung Galaxy Note 8 (nearly ended up with one myself) have a high failure rate with batteries blowing up even after a recall? As long as this device doesn’t and is able to expand during a fault, its unlikely to blow up in my face – literally!
Regularity problems
Finally, I’m going to finish with something common with cheap products, they often have faked or missing regularity information, this seems to have it all, but if I do a FCC search for 2BNGZ-L10, comes up with this, some small discrepancies between the names and location: FCC ID 2BNGZ-L10 But more importantly, no products listed. The more you wonder.
Later addition (25/08/2025):
I wrote the post in early August and since, I’ve taken it to and from work, used it at work and kept upto date with the council. It’s performed pretty well in that retrospect and I’ve had next to no issues – except the battery life. It will last 3 days with occasional use, but drains fast if you use it too intensively.
However, the USB port doesn’t support HDMI out I discovered, not a biggie, so I used my DisplayLink Dock which worked without issues – proving it does support usb OTG.
God, 2 weeks have been a real problem for this site!
You may of noticed, I ‘ve had a lot of problems with this site, from Internal Server 500 errors (caused by running out of memory, not storage or bandwidth) to actually disappearing all together! I’ll explain.
I’m probably the oldest client on Cadence networks, this site is probably the oldest on their server and unfortunately, servers do have a limit to how long they can run before they give up. Thats the spoiler alert. So what happened?
Simple, it got old, but to get there, I had a number of problems.
Originally, I was trying to solve my Internal Server Error 500 as it was caused by this site getting a bit on the large side. It contains my previous WordPress account posts and media as well as modern stuff that shows off my abilities. Detailed in this post:
It worked for a week, very very well, I was keeping an eye on cPanel (which is the web hosting manager, basically controls my part of the site from a larger cluster with shared hosting) for the server information, made sure I wasn’t overloading it because – well it would be bad because if that happens, things break, unintentionally. Now I don’t know how many sites are on that server, but I guess there is a few and it is one server, known as whm0.
Now the last thing you want, is to knock not just your own site, but everyone else’s and you got to take some responsibility for that if it does, like I did. Set the PHP memory limit in WordPress to 128mb (I.e. allocate 128mb to this site for the sever side processing), checked, loaded up the site, checked, done. A week later… it broke – not just the site…
And every other site now was suddenly offline. To make matters worse, cPanel also allows you to have a mailbox connected to your domain. Its not bad, its not the best and it doesn’t live up to what Zimbra can do, it works, it does the job. I still think Outlook is the best though. Now if you have my world email address, which is tied to the domain, you then realise that this email account is tied to the same inbox that is on the site, which means, no site = no emails = bliss – or stress!
So, an email later, site back online. It lasts just over 2 days and cuts out, again! Gets reset after a support email, cuts out 2 days later and then gradually gets shorter and shorter, until it cuts out on a weekend and offline for 2 days which was 10-12th August 2025.
In the meantime, I try everything to reduce the load, thinking that I was the problem, poured over the logs, got my dad to do the same, nothing out of the ordinary, but cPanel was moaning that the storage devices (not hot how they work, but still) was reporting errors. It was the “/” storage area to begin with as cPanel runs Linux, so drives look different in Linux. “/” is basically the root directory.
So, I did more and more diagnostics with the same outcome, now I am having nightmares and what was making matters worse is that Jetpack was adding to it. Random notifications at 05:35 for a start saying my site is offline.. ARRGHHH! It started giving me nightmares. So I went more and more nuclear, until I thought “lets do one last ditch effort, back everything up and delete everything, how long will it last?”
The nuclear option then proved something.
A day later, the server shut down again, but I didn’t report it, I had then discovered that we are not looking at a software fault, but now, a hardware fault. Then the next problem, “/mnt/backup” was showing errors! Yeah, the server was dying a slow and painful death. It got replaced this morning for something better. Plus they had issues with it for some time.
So, to qtp, thank you for your services, sadly though, its time to put you to bed. Good night.
In the meantime, they’ve upgraded me to a server with 2 extra cores, so it should be slightly quicker. However, I just can’t believe everything happened coincidently at the same time as I was sorting another issue out. I guess that is the irony of life. Hopefully, I’ll rest easier tonight – oh, I got to setup Jetpack on my tablet again, the Samsung Tablet anyway. I got a review coming up, involving it, but not as the main star. I went out shopping on payday for a new tablet, the cheapest one I could find on AliExpress without being too cheap. I couldn’t find any indepth reviews, so its time to put my thoughts on it. The reason is also slightly more interesting as I have a draft post and I plan to talk about it more in the future – I also need to update my CV with the new task.
Yes, I’ve gone down the political route, actually, I’m Apolitical, in that I don’t support a political party of any shape or form – but representing my views at a local parish council about local issues. I’ve been “co-opted” for about a month, in that I am elected by the councillors and not the members of the public and I got elected in by a large majority that really shocked me.
I’ll be talking about that in time to come and what difference I have made as I plan to do something for the better. I should point out, being a councillor, I can’t act on my own, but I can act as a body for decisions, although there is things I will be bringing up and I have a notepad for that, this is also where the tablet comes in as I have a council email address and as my inbox is subject to FOIA and SAR which is similar to my current employer – I don’t want my personal data mixed in with public data and vice versa as for a start, you got a number of laws to consider, that being the Data Protection Act 1998/General Data Regulation Act 2016 (which pretty much replaces the DPA 1998, even though I find out we call it DPA 2018) as well as Freedom of Information Act 2000 (FOIA) and Local Government Act 2000 or there abouts – I’m not 100% on this, but you get the idea where I am coming from. Considering FOIA needs to have a pretty good excuse for not having something, but at the same time, you have to adhere to GDPR/DPA which can be a fight between what’s right and wrong. You can’t just say “you don’t have it”, “why don’t you have it?”.
Hence my desire to review it and why I brought it. If you are wondering, I got a PriTom L8 tablet. 8 inch, £50 with savings, well was a little cheaper than that and so far, for the purpose I brought it for, its Ok. I’ll explain more and my concerns with it hopefully in the future. Lets say, it was a surprise in both ways. Particulary when I pitted it in an aquarium WebGL test with my Samsung Galaxy Tab A9 8.7.
Firstly, its been a difficult 24 hours for me, because of this site, I knocked it off unintentionally and it wasn’t because I was doing anything I thought was stupid, but 123-Reg, my domain company has what is suppose to be “Award Winning Customer Service”.
Yeah, throw that out of the site for one minute because I want to jump ship! Added a subdomain, easy task right? Wrong!
Adding it wiped my entire DNS records. Yikes! It gets much better, I had to repopulate those from scratch, I had about 5 DNS entries on 123-Reg and about 20+ on cPanel (my website administration). Why? Well, I’m trying to fix a HTTP500 error and to do this, I had to play with some settings. I’ve kindly asked my hosting company if they will be willing to update PHP and MySQL to see if that fixes the problem, but I’ve also been removing and installing plugins to try and trap the error. I’ve also signed up for a free website as well, to see if that traps it. This could take some time, but if you go into the /wp/ folder, that version (staging) seems to have far fewer issues, so I think it could be the 3D plugin? That has been deactivated for the time being, while I do more tests.
On the other hand, I’ve also set up a public folder on my Cloud Drive, this being OpenDrive where I will occasionally dump files.
These are without warranty or guarantee, they will be raw as hell, so don’t expect anything to work in Trainz – if it does, but if you find some gems you like, use them. Link below.
EDIT (2 – much much later): Moved to another page with another provider (Google drive), use this link (opens a new window): https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1EFy5fCBKZDrOxpK0y77By0aFYFwJIcrh?usp=drive_link Its in a page called currently “Cloud Drive Files” which includes a source folder of previously released files, but I can’t think of a better name and is currently handled by a Google Drive plugin.
EDIT (1 – much later): I think I fixed it, some of you may of noticed that they had weird text at the top – its WordPress debug mode, which gives an idea of what is actually happening to the site, then discovered I was running out of memory. I didn’t have time to fix it at home, so what do I do? Round up my smallest iPad (8in), take it with me to the pub as I was invited out and do everything in the pub with nothing more than an iPad with a keyboard and pub Wi-Fi over a VPN connection. Went through cPanel, found the offending (or rather add) the offending line, first time didn’t fix it, second time did – so now WordPress is chewing 128MB max of memory on my host’s computer. Good job I got more memory available as the test afterwards shows it was only using a max of 32%, so I am guessing the available memory for server use is 1GB, if we include cPanel overheads.
Still, I don’t drink, so ended up with loads of “Pepsi Max” (I’m inpartial to Pepsi and coke!). At least it seems to be fixed for the time being.
Now if you read my about me page, you’d realise where I live. If you looked at the weather for the past 3 months of where I live, you can see that another problem doesn’t bode well (that is being a redhead, here is a post of the problems).
I got a message from my dad while at work, it said with what the title states and to be honest, right now? I rather have snow! It is a tinderbox here. It really is!
I took these photos earlier in the month, somewhere around the 5th July 2025 while on a dog walk, that the place is just looking horrifically parched. I’ve seen it before, but never to the extent of this. We have had some rainfall, but the rainfall has been miniscule for what is actually needed within the area. An article by the BBC (Seen here – opens a new window) shows how dry it is across the UK. Bearing in mind, for me locally, its not that unusual to have dry spells as the weather system is driven by the Isle of Wight and Selsey Bill. We are thankfully surrounded to the south by sea water, but even then, with Chichester Harbour being full of (undrinkable) water, it has been unusually dry, and the risk of wildfires continue. So far, there hasn’t been any locally, however, Portsmouth Water (our local water supplier) has asked the locals to think carefully about their water usage.
The River Lavant is qutie dry, not unusual for this time of year as what you see on the surface flows during the winter, but the River Lavant is known to flow underground as the south downs is mostly made of chalk, but what is concerning is local levels.
Its also having an effect on everything locally, -those wanting to go to the beach which means anytiime it gets warm, no one can move as West Wittering beach becomes immensely popular – so popular, it constantly runs out of parking spaces. Thats not the problem, its the lack of transport to get there which clogs up the A286, which means you really can’t go anywhere as the whole of Chichester suffers as a result. If you do get any public transport, the trains suffer with delays as there is problem with the heat on the lines causing all sorts of issues. Buses? Well, they get stuck in the same traffic as everyone else gets stuck in.
As for me? I have to keep out of the sun, my skin can’t cope with it as the UV index at times in the UK has been hitting 8.
But snow? I would love snow right now., I’ll spend all day taking photos, despite how disruptive it is – this is back in 2010 when we had some seriously heavy snow fall. We haven’t had any snow like that since 2013, if we have, its measured in millimeters, not 15cm or more!
When I produced this site, I never thought I’ll be going through my past and present catalogue of Trainz content nor the extent of how much I made, I mean just look!
The worst bit is that is scratching the surface. There is a lot more I haven’t added and there is more in the files directory that I need to catalogue and post on the page. If you think that is bad, my Trainz install is someting else of a lot of self made stuff.
Shows you that even though I am quiet most of the time, in the background, I am actually working away.
Something you may of noticed that’s been added to the sidebar is a donate button. I’ll be clear first, it is completely optional. I’ve tried to put it in an unintrusive space, so you don’t get bombarded with it being put in your face and this will be the only place I will “promote it”. I’m not going to push it in everyone’s face as I am not like that. I’m not driven solely by money. I got targets, I got desires, agreed, but money is the root of all evil so I’m trying to not get corrupted by money and its problems.
The reasoning behind it is simple. I’ve had a few comment on my work and its quality despite being unfinished and the time I have. I don’t take commissioned projects on for similar reasons (dysfunctional family, stress and other work commitments), but if you want, you can keep me going. I don’t care if it is £0.01 (1 pence) or £100.00, I’m grateful for anything. I also do everything in my spare time. As in, on the train from home to work and back. Even then I have a WiFi battle!
To give you an idea of my likes and expenses and one is going to quite wild, as of 29/06/2025:
A 2 Litre bottle of Tesco’s Coke zero – £0.49 (49p)
Regular sized Latte for the morning commute with discount – £3.30 approx
Tescos meal deal – £3.60 (3 items, sandwich, side and drink)
Lyca Mobile 5GB plan – £5
Online storage – OpenDrive – $9.99 a month or around £8. Its unlimited though. Not sure of the security aspect, I’ll be honest, the program looks older than the hills and doesn’t have versioning, but it works. There are other options, TeraBox which is based in China and I’m a bit questionable about it as you have to upload/download through their app. OpenDrive does have a WebDAV option though. OneDrive is preferred though but its limited to 1TB and the upgrade goes to 2TB. A lot of my work collectively is already near the 2TB limit.
Waitrose shopping SBC – £10 a time
Keeping this site going – £20 (thank god!) a year. If you want to have your own site hosted by my friends, please talk to www.cadence.net.uk (Cadence Networks). I’ve been with them for years and despite what I have said in a previous blog post, I’ve have had no issues with them at all. Just I’m unfortunate with the issues I’ve suffered has been all external and they have had to act. No, they aren’t sponsoring me to say this, its all genuine.
Renewal of the domain – £31.61 for 2 years ☹ It was cheap at one point.
Keeping my wessexelectricnut mailbox going (As I write this, doesn’t work with the site for enquiries, so its on my burgess.world inbox) for a year – £60, although admittedly, it’s a Zimbra Hosted box with a briefcase that reports it has “unlimited storage”, until I broke it recently. Don’t ask – turns out 11GB of meshes was too much for it to handle.
Cheap laptop – £150 (believe it or not, a lot of my work is made on laptops with Intel HD based graphics processors)
Used Toughbook – £500 – £1,500 (acceptable for use).
Expensive laptop – £2,000
Ultimate desire, Panasonic Toughbook FZ-40 with 5G modem – £4,200
In the immediate term, I’m trying to get enough money together to get my own house with a mortgage, at 39, its not easy. My dad is trying to tempt me in staying at home but at times, I’ll admit, its becoming increasingly difficult as I do a day job (Train Planning), then have to do a ton of tasks when I get home related to him and the dogs. Getting to work, travel is fortunately cheap, I drive and park at my nearest station, that is because the travelling time by train caused conflict between my dad and me because to him, the evening wait for 45 minutes between trains to my local station is unacceptably long when Southern changed their timetable. He also has a vendetta against Southern. So £25 of petrol in my 29 year old Renault Clio (yes, the one that has the bonnet that flips the opposite direction to most cars – think Clio Williams. Actually, how many bonnets are hinged at the bumper than the scuttle these days?) is thankfully frugal on petrol – despite the hammering down the A27.
Parking is thankfully free as I work for the Train Operating Company, Rail travel is free for the local TOC but since the transfer from First to DFTO, everywhere else is now chargeable at Priv rate (75%, no more free travel for 10 boxes a year on Avanti, Great Western Railway, Hull Trains, Lumo or other First Group TOCs ☹ and no Friends and Family discounts on them too! And no, other DFTO companies, we don’t get free travel at all on them).
The only other big issue is one of my friends likes lots of holidays, but he has a different job and he gets a hell of a lot more than me. I don’t have any secondary employment, so its just my main source of income. Cost control on holiday can be difficult and he can be a bad influence, where I look at reducing my costs (and my weight), he goes out and orders quite a lot of food – which is actually quite costly these days.
So, there you have it, that’s the reasoning behind the sudden appearance of the “donate button”. As I said, its up to you. I’m not forcing you to pay and I don’t want anyone to struggle financially, if you can afford a penny or a quid or whatever your local currency is as I am British, I’m grateful for anything.
So I’ve mentioned about life with ASD, but I’ve not really talked about life as a redhead, a natural one as I’m naturally ginger and a bloke. One thing to get used to, you are the only ginger for miles. It’s estimated that there are about 1.5% of people on this earth with natural red hair, the UK has the highest proportion of redheads however, but there are unique problems associated with red hair.
Not the obvious, so keep that off the comments please! What better time to talk about it during a heatwave in the UK and there is a reason for that.
Here is my new best friend, SPF 50+ sun cream. At the moment, I feel like I am married to the bloody stuff. But anyway:
Summers = death!
No, really! The problem is that a lot of redheads have really fair skin and anything more than 20 minutes in the sun is a death sentence. Over a UV of 3, you better run and hide in the shade as nothing will stop you burning, nothing! Oh, stock up on that SPF 50+ and after sun, you WILL need it a lot! Either that or the first sign of sun, you’ll be heading for shade before you burn to a crisp in about 5 minutes flat.
– Compliments
Get used to them, you’ll get that a lot “Oh, I love your hair colour”, “I wish I could have your hair colour”, “It’s soo beautiful”. Etc etc, but….
– Insults
Expect to have a barrage of them, I mean A LOT OF THEM. Ginger P word (I wish that was considered a racist slur, but who’s going to listen to me? I find it offensive as it’s embarrassing. I can’t use the same phrase to anyone with a different hair colour). Ginger nuts – maybe I should throw a pack of them at someone, get back in your biscuit tin. I’ve heard it all. The annoying bit? I’ve challenged the BTP on this, but the insults are not defined as racist and I think they should be defined as race hate, but the abuse? So, if someone has a different skin colour to me, they can go to the police and get someone done for race hate with little evidence. The moment you are a ginger with the same problem? “Sorry, not interested”.
Support
As above, don’t expect any, society doesn’t want to know, the police don’t want to know, the politicians don’t want to know, no one wants to know, until redheads are gone for good, but by then, its too late anyway, we are already going extinct, it won’t be long until we literally are.
– Pain
What pain? I wondered why I can get away with twisting my ankle, cutting my skin and so far, not breaking a bone. Oh, that might be because of my milk input? Anyway, a friend of mine screamed out in pain after he hit the wooden bit to his bed more recently. Me? Ahh, that’s nothing, I keep going. Scientifically, redheads do have a higher pain tolerance, it seems to be true, I’ve somehow tripped into a road in Bognor Regis (kerb was high), twisted my ankle, got up, hobbled for a bit and continued like nothing happened – until the next day that is.
– Dating and sex (for blokes?)
In my unique case? Forget it! Seriously, it’s a joke. To add to the insult list “Sorry, don’t date gingers”, time and time again. That is the highest rejection reason, if not the only I got through my entire life. I did try to date a ginger and the result? “Gingers don’t date other gingers” which is sort of true, because everyone assumes we are bother and sister. Seriously!? Mine 2 sisters have dark hair, I was the only one cursed with the ginger gene, even that wasn’t suppose to happen according to my DNA. I tried to keep this off my blog but go on, you must know, sex life is non existent, I mean, non existent compared to other blokes. In fact, with the whole scheme of things, spend more time on my own than I do with a parter and it has taken a toll on my mental health. Considering I’m nearly 40, without kids, no marriage and only just getting a stable job. I also have ASD so here () and here () explains my ASD problems.
Did I mention also I am even more rare than you think? You see most redheads have green eyes, it’s a recessive trait. I have blue eyes which is also more dominant but rare as hens teeth in redheads.
– Highly visible
From a mile away. Honestly, I don’t need to see the person in my eye line before I get the abuse. However, in a large crowd? Oh spotting me is easy as hell. I’ll never get lost as that orange flashing beacon on my head is always lit saying “I’m here, I’m here! FIND ME”
– Other cultures.
UK? One thing, foreigners? Completely different experience. Why? They are more likely to be struck by lightning than to see a redhead. Not that I can tolerate hot climates. I can’t at all. I’m happier in the northern hemisphere and well away from the equator or even tropics of cancer. The further north I go, the better it is. Cooler weather? Love it! Hot weather? Hide. Anyway, other cultures for these reasons don’t tend to get redheads, so there is a lot of superstition that goes with it. Like seeing a yellow car. Oh and you get a LOT of attention.
In fact, it’s considered unlucky to have redhair (look above), but if you rub a redhead, it’s meant to symbolise good luck in a number of cultures, for someone that doesn’t like being touched. Interesting.
It’s hard to replicate and it’s hard to dye.
Yeah, don’t think about it. Really, don’t. Best keep the hair.k
Honestly, I wouldn’t wish having red hair on anyone else, until society changes its outlook. It wouldn’t be hard, but that requires legislation to change and to be frank, it will never happen. Until enough of us make a noise.
I thought I’ll write something different for once and it maybe something to give you a thought on what to do with ex corporate equipment, in my case, mobile thin clients. These don’t have to be used in an organisation to be useful, they can be used at home as well.
(From a MS Word document)
Have I just created a new word or phrase? I think I need to explain this. So I’m trying to reduce the weight on my back and my current setup is a mobile thin client for personal use, a normal laptop (Dell Latitude) for work and if I need it, a Toughbook for personal use, if I need to use my Toughbook locally.
In the past, I used to expose a custom RDP port to the outside world, along with the Wake-On-Lan connection to my desktop that sits on my desk at home, hidden behind a monitor. You maybe wondering “why am I using a mobile thin client for the task of working on something remotely as in this case rather than locally?” and “What are you going on about?”
Using thin clients isn’t a new concept, its actually pretty old, as old as the computer itself. The previous use of thin clients was terminals and terminals were introduced as a way of interfacing with a mainframe computer, just the connection standard is different these days, compared to when terminals existed. In addition, to interface with a mainframe system, you often had a multi user environment, as sharing resources lowers the cost of computing and resources that otherwise would be sitting idle, gets put to use. Using thin clients is the modern equivalent, just that home users can benefit from using thin clients too. In fact, in a way, Microsoft is going soft is going down that way for everyone.
Home users can also benefit, and for a big reason. You can have a pretty cheap second hand computer, you don’t have to run your normal software on it and on Windows, the tools to do it is already included in Windows – mstsc.exe (the client name. By the way, we are talking about “server and client”.) All you have to do to get the “server” side to work is make sure you are running something other than a home edition of Windows, configure a user account to have access to remote desktop services and find a device that has the appropriate software. It doesn’t have to be a computer, it can be a tablet. Android and iOS have a very useful “Windows app”. Find the name or IP address of your computer and in the location you are (house or otherwise), you should be able to access said computer over the local network with little or no difficulty. (I strongly suggest you read a tutorial on this, I’m only giving a general overview).
What about outside the house? Well, a little more difficult and I can’t type it out on here. You also need to consider power requirements as the computer, you’d have 3 options – turn it on yourself as eventually it will as if you use windows, turn itself off or go to sleep, bear that in mind. Set the power settings to always on or use “Wake on lan” which requires additional setup.
So you have a computer fit for using everywhere consider security risks, so you may want a VPN for this, username and passwords are a must at the very minimum and strong passwords that need to be changed every 72 days. Don’t store them on the remote device, think of other ways of securing the computer you are connected to, there’s loads of resources online and if you fancy getting to know windows better, gpedit.msc can be your friend. You can set the computer to lock anyone out for an amount of time after an amount of incorrect attempts.
So with all this in mind, why did I consider it?
The benefits outweigh the security concerns. You can buy a cheap second hand laptop and get it to perform just as well as a high end computer with the right configuration and connection. Yes, you can game remotely, Steam play is another way to do this. Plus, it was getting annoying transferring from one computer to another and constantly downloading the file via OneDrive the online storage I use. Its easier to connect to a computer and do it that way. Plus, I can transfer from device to device. Everything moves with me. Plus, there is a massive advantage, that despite the static PC, thin clients are less risky.
On my Dell Wyse, it has a UWF (Universal Write Filter), for those that don’t know, a UWF creates an overlay, it’s a good thing and a downfall and to understand how it works, means understanding how embedded devices work. Back when SSDs were new, a write filter was considered necessary since it reduced the amount of writes to the flash drive, which eventually kills them. So, sending the writes somewhere else, i.e. RAM, helps. What is even more interesting is that the writes to RAM, has one other side effect, security, the fact that ram is volatile, I.e. doesn’t save its state, means that if you are clever, you don’t save any passwords. In fact, the state is reverted to exactly the same point when you applied the write filter.
Plus theft and loss is not so much of an issue and a thin client – an old laptop repurposed is its own insurance in a way. Lose it? Steal it? No problem, set up a new OS, add your shortcut to your resources and away you go. Not the long laborious task of finding software and trying to activate it. The downside is that I have one single point of failure, my desktop or in an ente
‘rprise environment, a group of servers. This can be mitigated, in fact, I was looking at that problem myself and I could go down the VDI route (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) and back up the files to the virtual machine, off site. This would be easier than when the computer does break, reinstalling everything from scratch. Yes, there are ways to back up PCs these days and restore them, but this is quicker. Just take regular snapshots. Beisdes, not only do you have a computer and mobile thin client connected, what about as I mentioned, iPads?
Here is an example
(Yes, I did go long distance with RDP, I connected to my desktop from the Republic of Ireland when my computer was on the Sussex coast in the UK!)
One final thing, the battery life is a LOT better. The device I’m using which I have restricted the CPU to 2 cores from 4 is showing no ill effects, it has been on charge from a measly charger which it didn’t accept a charge anyway and the battery lasts. Its idling most of the time in comparison to other computers, so really lightly loaded.
The other interesting thing. You may think this is a new concept, did you know that if you have a work laptop, you may already be using remote access? Did you know that there are other versions too? Google Remote Desktop? (I’ll be honest, its not the most secure, but it works).
If you touched a Citrix resource, a VMware resource, Anydesk, Teamviewer, it’s the same technology with similar capabilities. Just the security reasons? Not only can you see what you are doing, someone who is looking at your computer can too.
I know I’ve not said anything for around 2 months, things have been rather busy, but been working on posts in the background.
I wanted to keep my work off this blog but I’m going to have to do it to explain some of the issues as some of the content coming up I have planned will talk about my recent trips. Work for me is basically, I’ve gone from one company to another basically overnight. Those in the UK will know about the big change that came out with transport, ironically 02:00 the day I wrote this blog – so by now, I’ve probably blown my cover to who I worked/work for which isn’t a secret, however, as part of this, I had 4 weekends where I was using up – I would say entitlements, but this isn’t the correct word, the word would be “benefits” which is basically my box cards (was 10x free travel over 48 hours on First group Train Operating Companies and Open Access Operators) and my Friends and Family Discounts, I spent 3 out of 4 weekends travelling with my family – some of, wheras the weekend I had to myself went to Hull.
I’m also writing up about thin clients as I had to “hack” – again, not the correct word – one, to upgrade it due to Dell’s support or lack thereof in this case, which is unusual for Dell as they are pretty good. I guess retaining old, ex corporate equipment isn’t in their remit, especially if it is a “Wyse” investment. Pun intended. Having said that, my Dell Latitude 7300 which my work place has provided has gone well past its 5 year birthday and is still supported, good! I don’t want to give it back to IT and keep using it for work! VoyagerPlan On Citirx just doesn’t like modern laptops and a lot of software doesn’t like chiplet based designs which is ultra frustrating, maybe if they gave me an Intel N100 laptop, I’d take it as it isn’t a chiplet design.
The one big change I’ve made and its to this site, is I started another blog
“What? Another one?”
If those haven’t noticed, the first time you log into my blog, it seems to crash with an “Error 500 – internal server error” or something like that. On the virtual machine I’ve copied this WordPress blog to, it doesn’t happen, but I have a suspect in mind. A 3D plugin as it sort of appeared after that.
The idea is to split off my development into a separate blog, where I will use this one for my personal experiences with life, hopefully concentrating what I am able and capable of doing. I’m also using a different blogging engine, so this will eventually when I can finish setting it up, will be located at https://www.wessexelectricnut.co.uk/flat. Nothing interesting yet, but hopefully in a few months time, I’ll have a few articles. I also planning on replacing the site with another static site. I was going to use WordPress for everything, but hasn’t worked too well.
